I finally saw this movie, with a couple girlfriends who never saw the series, I loved it and they loved it as well. I'm going to try not to repeat everything that everyone said, but wanted to make a few observations that I made. The movie was a roller coaster ride, and did as good a job as any to giving answers to lots of questions in the series. It had an oddly "serene" ending to me, and I think that is partly due to some DIRECT symmetry tied to the "Operative" as well as Mal and River's closing scene.
Book talks at great length about how Operatives think, work, etc. -- and then when Mal says "Someday you'll have to tell me how you know so much about this," Book just says, "No, I don't" in a way that to me very much implied that he had told Mal about his past, just moments before. Book was an Operative: I'm almost certain of it.
That was pretty much my assessment. In the series they set him up over and over with his access card on the Alliance ship, him knowing so much about crime and weapons, and even with that Bounty Hunter in the last episode saying "thats no Shepard." Joss was definitely leading to this.
Book was definitely an Operative, the remaining mystery (probably unsolved) is why he "retired"
I'm not sure we need to know the exact reason. I think he lived the SAME life that the operative in this movie did, and at some point someone opened his eyes, just like Mal opened The Operative's eyes at the end.
I also had the feeling that this operative is going to lead a very similar life to Shepard Book's, which I thought was very elegant closure to Book's character and bringing things full circle. I could almost picture Shepard Book saying that exact same thing to someone like Mal, then walking off and eventually finding his own Serenity ship to go aboard.
Now that I've had some time to sleep on it and think about it today, I've pretty much come to the decision that Wash's death soured the last 15 minutes of the (otherwise fantastic) film a bit too much.
I suppose to a degree I feel the same way. Of all the characters his was the most surprising, and the way it was done was very quick and sudden.
The true shock value for me was in how it happened. Serenity came in so hard and lost both its engines you were already practically mouring the ship. Then seconds later, during a brief sigh of releif that harpoon goes right into him. I won't say it soured the end for me but definitely made it very someber. HOWEVER:
I think pretty nearly everyone in the theater jumped when Wash gets killed. After that, pretty nearly every time a character got injured, I started worrying they were going to be the next to die.
This was my EXACT reaction. I literally thought at least one more was going to die, and it was a matter of who. Kaylee when she got shot with the darts? Simon when he was lying on the ground after being shot so suddenly? There were moments in that entire sequence where everyone almost bought it, even Inara....and I think that was the point partially. I think by doing that he really put everyone on the edge of their seats, which is a GREAT effect. (unfortunately, it doesn't have the same effect for rewatch value
).
I also believe it was done for a similar reason as to why JMS wrote off Marcus. JMS even mentioned in his posts during the making of B5, that if a character dies and you don't care then he wasn't an important character. But when someone you care about dies, its an emotional event. And that was certainly what Wash's death was.
Lastly I've read in places that this plotline was sort of what Joss had in mind for Season 2. I believe by that he meant revealing the story of the Reavers and finding more truths to River's condition (and perhaps a big step to her recovery). Would characters such as Book or Wash died in the series? Perhaps at some point, but not so early on. I think he wrote this movie as a finale, and in so doing needed to say goodbye to a couple characters. Book's past would have been revealed at some point almost certainly, but not as it was. Wash....who knows. Either way, this story was told in a movie theater, and it can't have the same friendly feel of a TV show. I think it was done very big and grand.
I know there is rumors of sequals, but I'm not convinced on how serious Joss is upon doing them. I really do believe he told as much as he could about the Firefly universe and brought as much closure as he could. There are some things left unsaid and unresoved, but life itself doesn't have an ending, it continues on...
